Library Board - Special Meeting

TO ORDER AT 6.30 ON JUNE 11, 2026. HOW ABOUT A ROLL CALL?

ROBIN BARKER.

HERE.

JUDY BOREY IS ABSENT TONIGHT. BARBARA FITZGERALD.

PRESENT.

KATHERINE MEEK. PRESENT. NOLA PERKINS.

HERE.

VERA WALTERS. HERE. ALEXANDER.

HERE. THANK YOU.

ALEXANDER WIROBA.

PRESENT.

AND WE HAVE A QUORUM.

Thank you. Do I have a motion on the acceptance of both the agenda for tonight and the amended minutes for March 12th and the minutes for May 14th?

I motion the acceptance of the agenda, the acceptance of amended minutes, and the acceptance of minutes for the special meeting.

Do I have a second? I second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. We'll call through these.

Robin Barker? Yes. Judy Borey is absent. Barbara Fitzgerald?

Yes.

Catherine Meek? Yes. Nola Perkins?

Yes.

Vera Walters? Yes. And Alexander Wairoba? Yes. We have a quorum. I mean, I'm sorry. Motion passes.

Well, we have a quorum, too.

Yeah, we do have a quorum. Sorry.

Good job. All right, public. I don't think anybody wants to talk to us tonight. Correspondence, communications, librarians report.

Thank you, President Barker. Librarians report for tonight, June 11, 2026. And I'm Pam Harrison, library director. Starting off with our statistics from last month, which was May, this is the most updated version. There were a few. clarifications that needed to be made. And we also rearranged a couple of things that we will continue throughout the rest of the year with these reports. We have moved e-content, which is our digital collections, including Cloud Library, Libby, Hoopla, et cetera. We've moved that to its own category. We think it's easier to identify that way. And then we also have moved the in-house computer use and wireless access out of number three, other, and put it into statistics since it really isn't a circulating item. It's just a statistic for our library. I'm pleased to see that books are higher than they were last month by about 500, which is great. All of our other totals look pretty consistent with what they normally are. Our visits are down just a little bit, but it's the last month of school, so it gets a little bit slower before the summer reading starts. Our volunteer hours are tremendous, up from 282 to 402, which is great. Thank you, all of our volunteers. And programming stats were exceptionally high this month of May because primarily of our school visits to advertise our summer reading program to the kids. On the next slide, we're going to show you a three-year statistical comparison of the major statistics that are on our monthly reports. I think it's good to look at this every once in a while to see how we're doing, where we might be able to do better, and just to see trends in our community. And it's pretty surprising that everything has been really, really stable. Library visits were down this year, as well as new registrations for library cards. but not by a lot. And I found it interesting to see that our Wi-Fi use and our computer sessions were up, where most libraries are not using public computers as much anymore. Ours are still very popular and still being used heavily. So that's important for us to know as we move forward. Our physical collection was almost identical to last year. E-content is very stable. High 168,000. Physical collection also about the same as previous years. So we're just booking along. First, we're always trying to get more people into the library, trying to get more card holders, people to come in and enjoy our events. But we're also doing a lot more outreach. Our outreach is up about 1,500 from last year. So we're meeting people where they are, and sometimes that just isn't inside the building. Summer reading has started, as we talked about when we met last month. The theme is Roar into Summer, Unearth a Story. And so far, we are just under two weeks into the program, and we already have 1,516 people signed up since yesterday, or excuse me, as of yesterday. And it's kind of fun to see which age groups are signing up the most. And I was very surprised. Well, I wasn't surprised at the highest, which was kids. And that's ages 6 to 12 at 500. But our second highest category is adults at 488, which I thought was really cool. And then our littles, which is ages birth to 5, is at 412 and teens at 116. We've already read over 397,000 minutes and 168 people have finished the program already. But you've still got lots of time to come in and check out more books, attend a program, log your minutes. We have all the way into mid-July to get those minutes accrued. Some of the past programs we've had so far over the last couple weeks, of course, was our summer reading kickoff. It was an exciting event, not only because we had these life-sized dinosaurs and then these baby dinosaurs that the kids could come up and pet, but we also had a power outage for 10 minutes during the middle of it. So that always causes excitement with the crowds. Our dino cooking camp had about 17 to 20 kids attend that, and that was really cute. And that continues throughout this month. where they'll be making different healthy treats. And then things that are coming up within the next few weeks, tomorrow is our live reptile show, which starts at 1 PM. That's always a crowd favorite. The next couple of weeks, the school-age kids are going to make mini Jurassic terrariums, stars and stripes sand art, and dinosaur bath bombs. Sounds fun to me. Teens are going to be eating slushies from Sonic and having a snowball fight at the slushies and snowballs event. And also, the forensic anthropology program will be where they search for clues in bone replicas with representatives from the Arizona Museum of Natural History. So that one's going to be really, really cool. So we hope the word gets out about that one. Adults and teens will be able to participate in an adventure escape room later this month and make Independence Day quirk wall art in early July, just in time for Independence Day. And then our America 250 programs are still running strong. Our next one's going to be Let's Talk About the Declaration of Independence with expert and speaker Shane Krauser. A celebration for America 250 will also take place on June 29th, and that features crafts, activities, a scavenger hunt, and a living museum. And in July, you can learn about how tea and spices impact the American Revolution and make a spice rub and a tea blend to take home during the Get the Tea on Spices program. So I'm showing you one of the new resources we have for the public now available at both of our service desks. This is a sensory and calming box. This is the youth box. We have these available at the service desk. They don't have to be checked out. They just need to be asked for. A lot of people of all ages these days have neurodiverse challenges, and sometimes when things get a little overwhelming, a box of sensory tools is very helpful to get them feeling more comfortable again. So this is the youth box, which includes worry stones, fidget poppers, a bubbler, which is this little thing with the It looks kind of like a manual lava lamp, is what I always think of. A weighted pad, which I think is actually outside of the picture. It's on top of the box over here. An emotions wheel and ear defenders, which are basically headphones. So we have these, both a youth box and an adult box. And we just want to support our neuro device patrons as much as possible. And that also brings me into something that we're going to be doing in the new fiscal year. We're going to become a library that is working toward certified autism center designation. And this is through the International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards. This is something a lot of cities, especially libraries and parks and rec departments, are doing. To be certified, you have to have staff training and accessibility improvements that support individuals with autism and other sensory needs. And so we are going to be working on this next year to align with our commitment to be inclusive and welcoming and accessible for all the members of our community. So I'll tell you more about that as we start that journey. If you've paid attention to the news recently, you may have seen two stories about the library in the news. The first one is the story walk in Apache Junction. This was in the Independent.

Yes.

Yes. And so this was an article that talked about our story walk that's in Prospector Park. You may not know that this was a grant that we received about four years ago. That's a partnership between Parks and ourselves. We want people to get out and moving, but also improving their literacy skills. And a lot of families are coming even from outside of Apache Junction to our story walk night walks. And that's the first event we have once we change the story in the story walk frames. And we do that quarterly. And Megan Carbiner, our outreach librarian, is in charge of the story walk. She really enjoys picking a really engaging story for people of all ages to read. And in the article, they even talk about one family mentioned that they like to come to because the book might not be something that they would normally check out or be attracted to. But they learn how books about all sorts of topics and all sorts of illustrations are interesting for people of all ages. So it was a really nice article done here and if you need a copy of it, we can definitely provide that for you. But we're happy to be asked to do that article.

It was a good article.

Thank you. And then our other article was the ABC 15 reached out to us to be part of their Things to Do series. It was a little misleading just because I thought if I pressed the video here, it was going to be all about us, but that's not about us. Ours is the article underneath. And we didn't print this one out just because it doesn't print nicely, but it's a nice little article about how our seed library has led us to this journey to have our reading garden They did an interview with me virtually, and we're going to be talking a lot more about the Guardian here in just a few minutes, but it's a nice little piece, and they've also reached out to me again. They would like to come out to do an in-person coverage event for their larger Things to Do segment. which is a video segment. So we're waiting on dates for that, but I'll let you know as soon as we have something confirmed. But yeah, we're really excited that they saw us and they mentioned us and there was a lot of good press on Facebook and other social media outlets about the garden. And now, last but not least, is the garden update. So today is June 11th. believe yep we are going to be substantially completed with our project in 11 days on June 22nd and then final completion on June 30th so we are almost there Wilming our construction company has been outstanding really listening to us and really working with us to get this to be the best-looking and Beautiful library or excuse me beautiful garden that we could have out here with all of the different amenities The biggest items that still need to be completed are a new roof gutter with a downspout This is going to take any rain that we get especially doing the monsoons and keep it outside of the garden So we're really looking forward to having that installed soon so we don't have to worry about that as we hit monsoon season and They're going to install the light bollards, which actually should have been installed earlier, but the wrong color had come, so they sent them back to have them repainted. So we, like I said, they want everything to be perfect for us. The lights on the shade structure, which you can see here on this bottom lower, excuse me, bottom left picture, shows the The amphitheater with the shade structure over it, there will be lights around the edges of that, so it's going to look really cool. I've gone out and I've sat in the amphitheater, and it feels great. It looks great. They're also going to be extending power to the exit gates on the outdoors, which, of course, is very important so that they work. and an ADA accessible automatic door opener on one of the doors going out and in from the garden. So that's going to be definitely an accessibility improvement for us. The curbing just went in last Friday. So that looks great. This picture below here is just showing them doing some work with the DG, with the rock. Oops. Down here are some of the native plants that were already planted and of course they're going to be getting bigger So they're going to start filling out as time goes by This is a pad here that is going to have furnishings on it which will for this pad be a picnic table with detachable benches and all the furnishings are going to be Assembled and put into the garden next week So if you come next week and look out the windows, you might be able to see pretty close to what it's going to look like when we are able to open the doors to the public, which we hope to do, would love to do it Wednesday, July 1st, if all is good. So that is the plan at this moment. We're not going to be doing any big programs out there right now or doing any big plantings in the garden. But we are going to be getting that program together and speaking with the master gardeners already and about our volunteer program that's going to be upcoming. So we're getting all the plans put in place so that this is going to be a really successful project and learning environment for everybody. Here in this top picture, they were hanging the festoon light cables. The lights are not in there yet, but they will be soon. So it's going to look great at night when the sun's going down and the lights come on and we have this beautiful view of the superstitions. The final inspections for the garden are scheduled to take place on June 25. And in addition to that, I've also served on a panel for choosing a artist to design a graphic, design some sort of image that is going to be placed on the concrete patio that leads out to the garden, so right over here by this door. And there's a sidewalk that goes all the way this way and a sidewalk that goes this way. So this design could creep into those areas, depending on what this designer decides to do. We did make a final choice in terms of an artist. Contracts have not been signed yet, so I can't tell you who it is. But that design will be sandblasted into the concrete. So it's going to look really, really amazing to have some hopefully organic art out there. And that is the end of my librarian's report. Thank you.

I am so glad that you're having Shane Krauser. He is the only person I ever knew that made the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence fun. And he does.

He makes it fun. Yeah, he had, when he did the Constitution a couple months ago, I think there was over 50 people there.

Everybody's known.

He's getting very well known. Yeah, and just a little side bit, but he just opened a ice cream shop in Chandler that opened over the weekend and it has an American Revolution theme and all the workers wear... That's what I heard. Yeah, and they all wear colonial garb, so yeah. They're all named after somebody famous.

That's a wonderful report. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm very excited about the garden. I keep peeking out and waiting. Yeah, that's neat. Yes, very exciting stuff.

Would any of you be interested in coming to the garden before it opens to have your own personal walkthrough tour? Sure.

I want to hear when it's going to be, the ribbon cutting might be happening?

The ribbon, because of the heat, we're not going to be doing like an open house ribbon cutting until October. So at that point, a lot of people will have already visited, but at least then we can have a formal occasion, a formal event. But I'd be more than happy to, even if you want to hear from somebody from the construction company about anything to do with that, I could probably arrange that too. But I will reach out to you all before we open in July and see if that's something. It's going to be early. You don't want to go out there at noon.

No, that might be fun to check it out. Yeah. It's been fun to look through the windows, but then you feel bad and wipe off your nose. Exactly. And you have to go around. They give you funny looks in the children's department sometimes. Yeah, they do. They do.

Thank you, Pam. Do we have any old business?

I'm sorry?

Do we have any old business?

No, we don't. Okay.

Then let us move on to new business and discuss the library boards. I have a trustee helper that helps me look creative. I won't name any names, but thank you.

So yes, if you're new to the board this year, we do create an annual report every fiscal year that, once approved by the board, is then approved by city council. So this is this year's report. The dates are a little off from what a typical fiscal year is, and we do that purpose it's June 1st 2025 which is the last month of last fiscal year to May 31st this year we do that because it is almost impossible for us to get as accurate data as possible if we have this meeting on like June 11th today then we're missing like the last two months of June of valuable statistics so that's why we do it a little a little bit different but I think we're gets more accurate and valuable results out of that. So starting with the cover page, a growing access cultivating community. You know, a little nod to our garden cultivating. And on the next page, and of course our beautiful garden. This was about two weeks ago, so it doesn't have as much of the It doesn't have any of the curbing. The amphitheater isn't quite done yet, but you get the idea of what it's going to look like. And then a quick note for me, talking about how all of these projects that we're so blessed to be able to do in the city and that we have the support of the city behind us to really connect with our community and have a space outside or building now that it's going to be used by all ages to bring in our seed library to just let us keep going in our ventures to become one of the best libraries in the state if not the country because we want to continue to enrich our community and learning along the way and just creating those spaces that everybody enjoys and wants to come visit again and again So growing a dream. So yeah, the library came out of my dream. Once we did the seed library and I saw how successful it was becoming, really wanted to take it a further step because we're seeing all these seeds go home, but we're not really saving them at that point, seeing them come back. And a lot of libraries have a lot of success with that, but it wasn't something that we were necessarily doing successfully where we were at that moment. So having this garden is really just going to bring that sustainability aspect of the seed library and getting your hands dirty and seeing how anybody can be successful in growing their own food, growing their own plants, being water wise and using drought tolerant plants. All of that we can demonstrate in this garden and not only that, just be a welcoming place for people to go outside and look at the mountains, read a book, and just enjoy the community, the beautiful community that we have. So that is about the dream to read, learn, connect, relax, and grow. Some pictures of our construction as we went along. We have tons of pictures, and I'm so grateful for that because we can really see every moment from when they first hit the dirt to where we are today everything has been captured in pictures and videos that we are saving at the library and can use later on in all of our ventures and then the perfect quote from Cicero if you have a garden in the library you have everything you need We're hoping that that might be part of the design for the sandblasted art. But it's not a guarantee. But I have mentioned it quite a few times. And then we're looking ahead. As we all know, our community is growing. We have the south part of the city now, where we have this 22-acre parcel that We've already started master planning. And this is just a very rough conceptual idea of what our new 15,000 square foot branch could look like with a multi-purpose room, a maker space, teen and adult and children's areas. Excuse me, not a cafe. I'm not sure what that says up here.

Core.

Anyway, with the mountain views, again, from the location down there on Ironwood and Warner. It's just going to be a really special place, and as we grow, we have to keep changing and evolving to be there for all parts of our city, whether it be up here in the north, down there in the south. It's a lot of working together with all of the different departments in the city and city management to get to a place where we're going to have another beautiful branch, not another beautiful branch, but another beautiful library where we can do a lot more with the additional people that we've gained over the last couple years. And then we have our adult programs. So these are some of the highlights from this past year. Seed Up Meet Up, which has become really big, especially in the last couple months. There are over 30, 35 people now coming almost monthly to those programs. And they're really excited to take the next step and actually be part of the program inside the library, packing the seeds, but then also to move out to the garden and to do some work out there. So that's going to be really exciting to see how that goes. Of course, we have our book crafts, paint and punch, which is a little spinoff of when you go to, I know Parks goes to Cat Wagon, I believe, and they do the, I'm not sure what it's called. They do art and have a beverage. Is it paint and sip? Yeah, I think it's paint and sip. So ours is paint and punch. chess tournament which was really successful this year and I just love this picture because we don't always see a lot of grown men in our program and this picture just shows a lot of them because they come monthly to do our chess program and then for the tournament that we hold once or twice a year fun band by first things first is our parenting education program The Flute Festival, which we know was really exceptionally popular this year. And I know they're really looking forward to moving out into the garden with that as well. And BiblioBytes. We all know BiblioBytes. And then moving on to teen programs. Teens want to come. They want to feel welcome. They want to have a place of their own, create new friendships. And so the most popular things with them is usually something that involves games, art, social activities. So these are just a few of the things that they did this year. The Teen Green event, which I believe was during April for Earth Day. Our Teen Advisory Board. The teen volunteers dressed up for Library Con, like for the America 250 themed Library Con. Camping events. So they do a lot of fun things. We have a great group of teens that come and also volunteer for the library. Our kids programs. Our Easter egg hunt, which we've done annually now for probably the last seven to eight years. Story times, which keep growing, keep getting bigger. Pretty soon we're going to need microphones to do those. Resolution Copper came in and did partner with us so kids could learn about mining using chocolate chip cookies. Bibliobytes Kids is another spinoff of Bibliobytes for the littles. Santa stories, color scavenger hunt, culinary kids, just a handful of things that we do that you can just see the amount of people's lives that we're touching every day, bringing people together. And then our outreach, there's Megan at one of her story times that she does. It looks like the cuddle bear from Bounty or Snuggles.

Snuggles, that's what it is.

Snuggle, yeah, Snuggle. So she's got the mobile libraries. We can meet people across the city, community events, pop-up libraries, senior services. We do a lot over there. And then our homebound services where we deliver books to those that can't make it to the library. Community partnerships. And they continue to just get bigger as we get bigger. We partnered with the police department where they came in and told stories and then brought the kids outside to look at their vehicles. Our partnership with Arizona at Work Pinal County and the ribbon cutting that we did with them at the end of last year. S'mores and Stories is a partnership with Parks that we do. Pause and Donate was the blue healer event that we did over in the dog park with parks and rec and Then of course our partnership with parks as well with a story walk Pages across ages as a senior services program and coffee with a cop which Vera loves coffee with a cop

I do, I do.

You actually might be in this picture if I could make it bigger. And then our statistics. Everything like we showed on that comparison slide during the librarian's report is showing that we're just continuing to go strong, continuing to add more to our collection, things that people are wanting to read, bestsellers, popular fiction and nonfiction. Our computer sessions are still very popular, even more popular than they were a couple years ago. We're always trying to find new registrations out in the community. We want people to come visit us and for us to go visit them. And our programs and their attendance are always very, very strong and have no signs of slowing down anytime soon because of our wonderful program staff that just are so creative and have so much enthusiasm and energy to do the amount of programming that they do. And just finishing up with our statement of property, which is required, our financial statement. And that is basically the end of the report.

I see here that you had a story time at Radiance. That's down south.

Yes.

Yeah.

So there's two communities down there. There's Radiance and there's Blossom Rock.

Yeah. That's really good.

Yep. Radiance is being built a little bit more quickly than Blossom Rock, but we're starting to do some outreach and do some things with Blossom Rock now, too. And they just had a school break around Great Hearts a couple weeks ago, and we were invited to go down for that. So yeah, there's a lot going down there.

Comments, questions, concerns on the annual report? Vera, do you have any comments or questions, concerns about the annual report?

She did an excellent job, as usual.

Thank you, Vera. And thank you, Sancy. June is one of the roughest months of her existence at the library. It's annual report month. All hands are on deck.

I do too. Do we want to vote on this? On approval for this tonight? Sure. Yes. I would need a motion to do that.

I would move that we accept the annual report of the library.

Second. I have a motion and a second. Roll call, please.

Robin Barker.

Yes.

Judy Borey's absence. Barbara Fitzgerald. Yes. Catherine Meek. Yes. Nola Perkins. Yes. Vera Walters. Yes. Alexander Y. Roba?

Yes.

And the motion passes.

All right. Excellent. Thank you. It's a beautiful report. It truly is. Do we have any requests for future agenda items? Not that we can think of, but we'll keep thinking. Yes. Okay. In that case, I will adjourn the meeting at 7.10.